st hopeful of its future--he detects as amongst its
characteristics "a certain commonness of mind and tone, a want of
dignity and elevation in and about the conduct of public affairs, and
insensibility to the nobler aspects and finer responsibilities of
national life." Then he goes on to say[37] that representative and
parliamentary system "provides the means of mitigating the evils to be
feared from ignorance or haste, for it vests the actual conduct of
affairs in a body of specially chosen and presumably qualified men,
who may themselves intrust such of their functions as need peculiar
knowledge or skill to a smaller governing body or bodies selected in
respect of their more eminent fitness. By this method the defects of
democracy are remedied while its strength is retained." The members of
American legislatures, being disjoined from the administrative
offices, "are not chosen for their ability or experience; they are not
much respected or trusted, and finding nothing exceptional expected
from them, they behave as ordinary men."

"If corruption," wrote Judge Story, that astute political student,
"ever silently eats its way into the vitals of this Republic, it will
be because the people are unable to bring responsibility home to the
executive through his chosen ministers."[38]

As I have already stated in the first pages of this chapter, long
before the inherent weaknesses of the American system were pointed out
by the eminent authorities just quoted, Lord Elgin was able, with that
intuitive sagacity which he applied to the study of political
institutions, to see the unsatisfactory working of the clumsy,
irresponsible mechanism of our republican neighbours.

"Mr. Fillmore," he is writing in November, 1850, "stands to his
congress very much in the same relation in which I stood to my
assembly in Jamaica. There is the same absence of effective
responsibility in the conduct of legislation, the same want of
concurrent action between the parts of the political machine. The
whole business of legislation in the American congress, as well as in
the state legislatures, is conducted in the manner in which railway
business was conducted in the House of Commons at a time when it is to
be feared that, notwithstanding the high standard of honour in the
British parliament, there was a good deal of jobbing. For instance,
our reciprocity measure was pressed by us at Washington last session
just as a railway bill in 1845 or 1846 woul